Memories Revisited
by Isaiah58
Summary: Not long after they took their thrones, the Just and Valiant monarchs allowed their hearts to outrun their heads. A year later, it is beginning to appear that their great sacrifices were all for naught.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** In case you were confused, I own nothing.

Timeline: just over one year after the children were crowned at the Cair

"Help me to understand, Lu." Peter wrapped his arms around the newly turned nine-year-old, oddly disturbed by her sudden tears and the sweaty head that had buried itself deep into the red velvet of his over tunic. "I can't fix it if you won't tell me what's wrong."

"You can't fix it." The birthday girl shook her head, letting the short hairs of the rough fabric rub over her face, so different from their brother, who would have rather spent an extra hour on the field with Orious than let his skin be subjected to such an affront. "Just let me hide for a minute."

"Hide from what, Lu?" The fourteen year old's thickening fingers reached in to pry her face out from under his arm, where she had deposited it. "Since when does Narnia's valiant queen hide from anything?"

"Since now."

A quick glance around the room assured him that all was well with their other siblings, Susan surrounded, as usual, by a crowd of the oak dryads who were so drawn by their queen's gentle strength. It had been the dryads' idea to host this feast, and the sturdy maidens were arrayed in the bright colors of their autumn best, looking for all the world like their fiery amazon spirits might burst at any moment from the soft silks that draped from muscled shoulders and bound back thick hair from chiseled faces. Unless the threat came from the dryads themselves, there was nowhere safer for Susan than in their adoring presence.

Edmund looked about ready to jump out of his unaccustomed party clothes, but, as the Just King sat on a mossy boulder, surrounded by no less than a dozen young squirrels, all questioning him in unison regarding the complexities of Narnian law regulating a claim on misplaced valuables, namely of the hard shelled, edible variety, Peter could find no cause for concern greater than the invariable tongue lashing that Edmund would subject him to as his little brother fought against the never ending subtleties of the squirrel's mother tongue.

"Tell me who it was, Lu, and I'll send an entire pack of angry mongoose after them."

"Peter Pevensie!" Pale brown eyes sparked amber glass as she finally pulled away from him, sharpening chin tipped up just far enough to catch him in her gaze. "You would not!"

"I would if would make you smile." He smoothed her hair back from her face, ruffling it where it had pasted itself, sweaty, to her neck. "And then, I would send you to Susan to straighten you out, lest Narnia think that they had gained a ragamuffin queen."

"Don't say that." She stiffened and pulled away from him, turning a little, as if to hide her returning tears from the older brother who still noticed everything. "You don't understand."

"Understand what, Little Fox?" Peter folded to the ground, pulling her down to lean against one of the magnificent trees that surrounded the clearing, dozens of patient fathers, watching in half slumber as their daughters displayed themselves for all the forest to see. "Talk to me, or we'll both be here until after the moon returns home."

Quietly, the nine year old laid the back of her hand against his leg, exposing the thin pale scar of a cruel rope burn. "It's still happening."

"Where?" It was Peter's turn to stiffen as he turned on his little sister, memories of the bloody wound painting themselves against her pale skin. "Does Edmund know?"

"No." She almost pulled the limb away, hiding the not quite fresh scar, but changed her mind and left it sitting where it lay. "Don't tell him. Not now."

"Before the moon next greets the sun."

"At least a full sky dance." She pulled out from under his shoulder, nothing child-like about her posture as she defied him. "Let him sleep through the morning. Tell him in the evening when he has the night to plan."

"Perhaps they ought to have crowned you the High Queen," Peter knelt and dropped a kiss onto his little sister's brow. "You have the perception for it. A full sky dance it is. Now," He stood and pulled her to her feet, the difference in height exposing her age for what it was, "go and find someone with opposable thumbs to straighten out your hair. We oughtn't to give the nyads anything else to gossip about."


	2. Chapter 2

"Pete," Edmund edged up to his brother's side sometime deep into the late watches of the night, or perhaps early in the watches of the morning. With the way that the dryads were taking in earth, and had been all day, the party promised to continue at least until Sunsong, when their fathers finally shooed them back to the protective grove where their mothers would be waiting for them. "Something's wrong with the willow dryads."

"Leave it to the girls, Brother Mine." Peter knew instantly what it was that the younger boy was picking up on, but thought it better to feign innocence, as Edmund's wrath at finding the information withheld would be a hair less volatile than Lucy's at finding it given, only a hair, but a hair nonetheless. "What is wrong with the willow dryads is that they have had too much earth and would like nothing better than to perch you in their branches and coo over you like a baby squirrel."

"I am not an infant anything!" Edmund's eyes flashed the way the fourteen-year-old had known they would, all but distracted by the slight against his age. "How difficult is it to understand that their kings will never be as tall as their saplings? Am I not taller than nearly every dwarf in the clan?"

"And, they would coo over the dwarves as well, were they not in such fear of their axes. Carry a sharper blade, Little Squirrel, and they might let you be."

"Or, they might use it to carve my initials into their sides." Edmund resisted the urge to kick his brother in public, filing away the use of The Name as something to be repayed later. "There seem to be an exceedingly high number of 'P's' marked in this section of the forest."

To his delight, Peter flushed a dark shade of red, muttering something about 'girls' and 'never leaving a fellow alone.'

"Get on with you." The older boy finally recovered after much huffing and not a few shudders, grateful that the dark would have prevented at least _some_ of their subjects from seeing his all too boyish moment. It had been difficult enough convincing the respective parties that they were more than mere foals, or kits, or saplings the first time around, let alone a second. "Find somewhere else to mingle, or I'll order you to dance with the fauns _and_ go speak with the nyads."

Flushing his own shade of red, the ten-year-old scurried away, and Lucy stepped out from behind one of the trees that were scattered round the edge of the clearing, not a Tree mind you, who would have given her away in a moment, as they were dreadfully terrible at keeping secrets, but a tree. Her clear, bright giggle rang out, and she pressed her arms around her oldest brother's waist once again. "You were brilliant, Peter, but he doesn't believe you, you know."

"He never does." Something gray flickered across the depths of his blue eyes, so brief that it might have been nothing more than a shadow cast by one of the dancing forms around the fire. Not when I want him to, at least."

"Not when you're lying to him." Her small nose pressed into the soft spot at the bottom of his rib cage, tickling him gently, and the shadow disappeared. "Edmund's only ever believed one person's lies, and you will never be Her."

"By Aslan's grace, no." He pulled her away to look at her, searching the pale eyes for their familiar sparks of amber and gold. "You are enjoying yourself, aren't you? You're not thinking on it?"

Bright lips pursed at him under cheeks that were flushed from dancing. "Of course I'm thinking on it, Peter. How could I not? But, yes, it is a jolly romp, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is." He reached down and straightened her dress with a well practiced flick. "Aslan ought to have given you hooves and not feet, to better keep up with the fauns."

"Daughters of Eve can dance quite well, thank you very much!" One of the fore-spoken feet stomped emphatically, bare toes digging down into the soft earth in protest. "And, if I had hooves, I would look quite silly trying to dance with the dwarves."

"Well, Sons of Adam have not been so well gifted." He spun her around, shooing her away from the familiar conversation. "You had better go and make up for your brothers' dreadful lack of skill."

As she skipped back towards the fire, wearing the weight of the kingdom in the slender circlet of her crown, the oldest Pevensie realized that the darkness was beginning to give way. Soon enough it would be Sunsong, and then Moonsong, and it would be time to tell Edmund the truth.


	3. Chapter 3

"Let him sleep." Susan stirred a little under the heavy coverlet one of the valets had dragged from her room, shivering against the constant chill in this little used parlor, as if someone had forgotten to tell the stones that it was now mid summer, or what would have been called mid summer in England, and it had been months since snow and ice and frost had given way to green. Of course, she still half expected for things in Narnia to be made of Stones, rather than stones, in which case, the chill really would have been out of pure spite. "You know how he is after a party."

"Exhausted?" Peter sat up to look at his sister from his couch, part of him wondering what The Beavers would think to know that their monarchs had fallen asleep in the first parlor they found, not bothering to go so far as their proper rooms. Mrs. Beaver would tisk and pat his knee in a motherly way, and he would indulge her, for once not pretending to be older than he was. "Irritable? Intractable? As if every nerve were trying to claw its way out of his body?"

"All of the above." The twelve-year-old sighed, and, for a moment, her calm mask slid away. "They're going to go and try to fix it again, aren't they?"

Peter's gaze flicked from Edmund to Susan and back again, watching to see how much she knew, feeling her mentally pull their younger siblings a little closer, as to protect them by closeness. "Unless Aslan has traded them out for dwarflings, yes."

"They're going to be hurt."

"We can't stop them, Su. You know that."

"They're going to be hurt badly." She was not questioning any longer, but telling him something, everything in her voice emphatically true. "I drank from the river god last night. I saw them. Edmund was – Peter, there has to be another way!"

"Susan, hush." He moved closer to her, catching her cold hands in his warm ones, willing the fear from her eyes. "What other way would you have us take? None of the Trees are strong enough to do what needs to be done. You've seen how easily their saplings bend and break."

"Then let them protect their own children." She buried her dark head in his shoulder, both of them ignoring the warm tears that were wetting his tunic, pretending that she was old enough and strong enough to have drank from the river god. "And, we will protect ours."

"They're not our children, Su." He tipped her chin up and brushed a hair out of her face. "They're king and queen.

"And, you," he watched as she slowly straightened, not so quick as Lucy to trust Aslan's will, but just as steady in her resolve, "are not nearly old enough to drink the water of sight."

"Neither are you." She touched the place just inside his wrist where the river god had marked him. "But, it has never stopped either of us."

"They won't be told what you've seen."

"No, Peter." A soft moan meant that their youngest sister was waking, and she dropped her voice to a whisper so low that it could barely be heard. "It will be to us to know and to wait."


	4. Chapter 4

"How long have you known!" Edmund was up and pacing, and, had there been anything in the parlor lighter than a couch, he might have thrown it. "Were you going to keep it to yourselves forever!"

"Only until this Moonsong." Peter had finally dropped to the edge of the firm couch, still nearly standing, as if his brother's anxious energy was running through him like a spark. "You needed the sleep, Ed. I won't see you kill yourself."

Susan shuddered, so slightly that even Lucy did not notice, and the fourteen-year-old wondered again just what she had seen. How close, exactly, would Edmund come to that very feat before they were through?

"No." The dark haired boy was calming already, everything in him steeling into a fiery resolve. "You would see them killed instead, while I slept. What precisely, Peter, do you know?"

"Peter knows nothing." Lucy sprang to their eldest brother's defense, the fresh fire sparking in her gold brown hair, stance as fierce and firm as a lioness. "I spoke to the dryads, and I decided that you were not to be told."

Edmund whirled on her suddenly. "You had no right."

"I am queen." The eight-year-old stared at him without flinching, heedless of bare feet on the cold flagstones and old straw. "And, I am coming with you. I had every right."

"Again." He brought all the weight that he could bear into the simple words, his fury boiling and barely controlled beneath the surface. "What, precisely, do you know?"

"There are saplings leaving the grove in the morning to find sun and never returning in the evening." She ticked off the facts with a cool resolve, the water to his fire, creating an evenly tempered steel. "Their mothers search for them but never find them. Days or weeks later, their empty Trees disappear out of thin air, and the mothers feel their saplings scream once, and then nothing."

"And, we've found no idols?"

"We've hardly had a sky dance, Ed." Peter was standing again, agitated at being left to the side of the conversation, blond hair flying as he gestured with his hands. "We've barely begun _looking_ for idols."

"Did you check in your bedchamber, Brother Mine?" Edmund's voice was harsh, raw as if the other boy had rubbed salt into an open wound. "Have we begun _looking_ that far? As best I can tell, we have yet to leave this room."

"I've sent the satyrs to take stock of everything that comes in or out of the port cities," Susan stood and pressed Peter down to his place on the couch, feeling the tenuous relationship between the two boys begin to spit and strain, "in preparation for the coming season's taxes. The order was given just after Sunsong. If anything is amiss, I will hear of it."

"Aslan's blessings." The ten-year-old flashed his sister a look of pure gratitude, knowing better than to ask about the sorrow that was in her eyes as well. "At times I think you could run the kingdom without us."

"No." Susan settled back down into her place, gesturing for the younger boy and Lucy to sit as well. "I am far too old and sensible to impersonate a dryad sapling in order to get myself kidnapped. Now, when do you leave, and what provisions do you bring with you? You will need food and messengers."

"Nothing that speaks." Edmund almost stood back to his feet, memory flashing against the dark eyes as he leaned closer to Susan, pressing his point. "That last bat nearly got Lucy killed."

"Juice beetles, then." It was Lucy who offered the suggestion, eight-year-old eyes bright at the idea of having thought of something the older children had not. "Send a murder of crows after us, and they're sure to notice the beetles within a day."

"You're sure that juice beetles only live in the Cair?" Peter, as usual, objected, doing his best to swallow down his pride as he watched his younger siblings plot and scheme without him. "You won't be taken to the one other place where they happen to live?"

"I spoke with a magpie just last night." Lithe little fingers twined their way into his, squeezing just hard enough to be comforting. "They are practically a myth outside of the Cair. Some of the birds don't even believe they exist."

"They didn't believe in humans either." The blond boy shook his head. "And, the word is Sunrest, Lu, 'last Sunrest.'"

"I still don't understand how we are meant to know that it is a Sun and not a sun." Susan intervened on the younger girl's behalf, granting Peter the mercy of a distraction. "It certainly looks enough like our sun."

"It's a Sun because it is a Star." Lucy straightened in her best imitation of a centaur, and Edmund snorted in spite of himself. "Your sun is likely a star, just as your world is round and not flat."

"And, this world is likely a madhouse." The Susan glanced around the room at her siblings and grew suddenly sober, returning to the task at hand with all of the efficiency of clock work. "Because, it seems that all worlds are."


	5. Chapter 5

In the dark hours of the next Sunrest, Narnia's two youngest monarchs slipped over the walls of the Cair, so soft and silent that even the Trees did not take note of their passing, although the castle bats whispered about the light that had been shining in Peter's seldom used room until the earliest dawn could be seen creeping over the edge of the Eastern Sea.

Lucy ran barefoot through the forest, and her brother followed closely, doing his best to ignore the moist earth that simply would squeeze its way through his toes. "In Archenland," he groused at her good naturedly, pulling the last boughs of their hiding place together as the sky around them threatened to turn gray with returning Sunlight, "kings are expected to wear _shoes._"

"In Archenland," the eight-year-old simply pillowed her newly ginger and brown head into his lap before he had a chance to protest, smoothing her heavy cloak over both of them, "I expect that kings rarely attempt to be mistaken for dryad saplings, hoping to be kidnapped and not quite chopped up into an idol to the god Kedrach."

To both of their ears, it sounded odd to speak out loud, even if in a whisper, the plan that they never had quite finished going over, as if, by not speaking it, they might save Peter and Susan some of the pain of what was to come. "The whole of it seems a very Narnian sort of thing to do."

"As if anywhere but Narnia would have dryad saplings to worry about." Edmund simply rolled his eyes, twining cold fingers through her rough cut hair, letting the raw edges catch on the calluses that would have seemed odd on any other ten-year-old. "Narnian solutions to Narnian problems."

"But, we're not really Narnian, are we?" Lucy rolled over onto her back to look up at him. "I mean, we're part of the deep magic, but we're not really Narnian, not like those juice beetles are Narnian."

"You're a queen, Lu." He brushed a stray hair out of her face, something in his gaze softening and making the still awkward touch warmer than it ought to have been. "Isn't that enough?"

The not quite baby fat around her lips crinkled with thought for a long moment, images of firelight and dwarves and satyrs dancing across the golden eyes before she finally nodded. "Aslan seems to think so."

"Kedrach." He broke the silence that had fallen over their tiny hiding place, almost startling himself with the sudden sound of his own whisper. "I don't remember him. Was he one of the island gods?"

"I – I don't know." Lucy was quiet, almost penitent, as she rolled back over to half face him, turning over one pale wrist, like a little child presenting a broken treasure knocked off of some forbidden shelf. "I heard a man say the name, and I saw some images, like a wordless picture, and then it was over."

"Lucy!" The gasp was almost loud enough to give them away, but neither child seemed to care, and a single tear ran down the smaller face as her brother lifted the wrist to examine the almost round scar that glinted faintly silver in the dim light. "How many times?"

"Not as many as Peter and Susan." She sat up a little, freer to speak of their siblings now than they ever were in the Cair. "You know that Susan goes nearly every Neweek, while the rest of the castle is still sleeping. She cries in her room afterward."

"And, Peter sleeps on my couch every Sunrest until he can get the images out of his mind." Edmund tipped her chin up until she finally looked at him. "You didn't answer my question, Little One. How many times?"

The eight-year-old's eyes filled with the tears of a hundred lonely hours staring into the darkness, and her brother had his answer.

"You know that you weren't to drink from it, Lu. Grown-ups in Narnia don't make rules just because they feel like it."

"I'm a daughter of Eve." Lucy snorted at him thickly, trying valiantly to flash a smile through her tears. "Creatures that are practically fairy stories can break most rules."

"Besides," she turned his wrist over with the expert touch that was quickly making her a favorite among the healers, "someone had already quite talked the river god into the idea. He didn't seem to think it at all odd that his fourth monarch should come to drink."

"Still," Edmund almost jerked the marked wrist from her hands, twitching a little before he allowed her to rub it tenderly, "you oughtn't to have done it. You know that nyads can't tell human age. He wouldn't have had the faintest idea how much younger you are than Peter."

"Nor you." She turned over and pillowed her head in his lap, appearing to fall asleep with no further conversation, leaving her words to wind themselves through her older brother's thoughts, careful not to stir as he reached forwards and smoothed the tear tracks from her cheeks.


End file.
